Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights

POLITICS-THAILAND: Junta Faces Discontent After Largest Party Banned

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 31 2007 (IPS) - For women like Thitirut Hochi and men like Wasuwat Datanabodee, Thailand is heading for dark and troubling times. They said so with tears and anger on Thursday morning at the headquarters of the country’s largest political party.

”Thai people are unhappy with the country. We are going into a very dark period,” Thitirut, a 52-year-old homemaker, said as tears poured down her cheeks. ”There is no more future for us here.”

”There can be no more development here,” added a visibly angry Wasuwat, 47, who runs a small business dealing in old machines. ”The people hate this (military) government.”

They were among a small crowd of Bangkok’s citizens who had gathered at the entrance to the headquarters of the Thai Rak Thai (TRT – Thais Love Thai) party to vent their feelings. The mood was understandable, since it followed a sweeping judgement delivered close to midnight on Wednesday that banned for five years the country’s most popular party and all its leaders, including ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The nine-member Constitutional Tribunal, which was set up by the military junta that seized power in a coup last September, was scathing in its criticism of the “political crimes” the TRT had committed. ”The Thai Rak Thai’s crimes are very dangerous to democracy,” said one of the judges, Krairerk Kasemsant, who took part in reading the verdict, which lasted over five hours.

A fellow judge, Vichai Chuenchompoonu, said the TRT and the 111 members of its executive committee were guilty of attempting to use a controversial parliamentary poll in early April last year as ”a means to achieve totalitarian power.”

The main charges that had been brought against the TRT included payments by two senior party officials, former ministers Thammarak Isarangura and Pongsak Raktapongpaisal, to small, little-known political parties to contest the Apr. 2 general elections in order to secure a minimum vote requirement to ensure the ballots counted.

The party that was founded by Thaksin, a billionaire telecom tycoon, was also faulted for paying an official attached to the Election Commission to change party registration information.

Earlier in the day, the Democrat Party, the country’s oldest political organisation, was absolved of all charges that had been brought against it for its role in the April 2006 poll.

The Democrats and other opposition parties boycotted that election, which was called by the TRT government of the day in the wake of growing anti-Thaksin protests in Bangkok. The demonstrators had taken to the streets to vent their anger at alleged charges of nepotism, corruption and the abuse of power linked to the Thaksin regime.

But if Thailand was hoping that Wednesday’s verdict would bring an end to the country’s deepening troubles since the 2006 coup, then the acting leader of the TRT, Chaturon Chaisang, had another, more combative message for the pro-junta supporters. ”We have not received justice. The major verdict is biased,” he told reporters shortly after arriving at TRT headquarters in a western Bangkok neighbourhood. ”This is not a democracy.”

That is a view shared by analysts, who fear the verdict was driven more by a political mission to ”destroy the TRT,” as one said, than to arrive at a judgement based on the facts of the case.

”The ruling by the tribunal proves that the court is not independent of the military junta,” Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ”It is doing the unfinished job that was started by the junta with the Sept. 19 coup.”

”I don’t see the verdict as an end of Thai Rak Thai’s and Thaksin’s struggle to challenge the junta,” added Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for the global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch. ”Thailand has to brace itself for a longer period of uncertainty.”

And that, despite all the top politicians of the party being deprived of their civic rights due to the verdict. The 111 members of the TRT executive committee, including Thaksin, who is living in exile in London, will have no right to vote, form a new political party or function as politicians for the next five years, Sunai confirmed in an interview. ”This is nothing new here; it has been set in the context of the election laws.”

The gloomy political forecast stems from the unprecedented support base the TRT has developed since it was founded nine years ago. The party’s 14-16 million supporters enabled Thaksin to lead the TRT to consecutive parliamentary victories in 2001 and 2005 with thumping mandates never witnessed since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

The bulk of the TRT’s support is rooted in the provinces, such as the poorer sections of the north-east, the north and parts of the central regions. Loyalty for the TRT was secured through a range of pro-poor measures the party promised before elections and delivered after its victory. They included a universal healthcare scheme, a debt moratorium and soft loans to boost the grassroots economy.

The extent of this bond was on display Wednesday, when TRT supporters like Suwit Saengmaneetham, a businessman in the north-eastern province of Sakon Nakhon, were among others in his community who stayed up late Wednesday to await the verdict.

”The tribunal should have only punished the few people who committed the crime, not all the leaders and the whole party,” Suwit told IPS over the telephone. ”It was unfair. We are unhappy and disappointed.”

The April 2006 poll that led to the banning of the TRT was, itself, nullified in May last year. That court verdict precipitated political tensions leading to the country’s 18th coup. And the junta that came to power has, since September, been at pains to dismantle the TRT and crush its support network, beginning with a universal ban on all political activity in the country.

”It (the junta) does not seem to understand democracy. Dissolving parties is not the answer,” says Giles. ”It has succeeded in disenfranchising 16 million people who wanted the TRT. They will be angry and bitter.”